Justicecraft: A Fresh Lens for Understanding Political Change

Eliza Garnsey
Jul 2
4 min read

Lauren Balasco, Eliza Garnsey, Arnaud Kurze and Christopher K. Lamont

In today’s world, where global challenges are increasingly complex and societal norms are in constant flux, the quest for justice remains both vital and often frustratingly out of reach. Enter justicecraft — a new framework introduced in the recently published book Justicecraft: Imagining Justice in Times of Conflict. The book offers a fresh, dynamic way to think about how justice is understood, pursued, and realized in the context of political change. Through shifting the focus away from paradigmatic approaches to practicing justice, such as transitional justice, this book presents a novel idea that breaks situated struggles for justice into core elements.

What Is Justicecraft?

Justicecraft is the idea that making justice is a craft — an art and a practice that, in itself, drives political change. Justicecraft identifies five key elements that shape political transformation:

• Skills — the abilities and tactics used in justice struggles.

• Knowledge — the information and understanding that inform these efforts.

• Labor — the work and energy invested in seeking justice.

• Affect — the emotions and feelings that motivate and sustain movements.

• Materiality — the tangible resources and environments that enable or constrain justice.

Together, these elements form a framework for analyzing how struggles over recognition, representation, and reparation can either fuel or hinder political change.

The Core Values of Justicecraft

The framework of justicecraft is anchored by three values:

Holistic — it seeks to provide a comprehensive (though not exhaustive) approach to understanding justice struggles.
Evolving — it recognizes that ideas of justice shift over time and across different contexts.
Inclusive — it aims to amplify voices that are often marginalized, silenced, or overlooked in justice movements.

Importantly, justicecraft is not prescriptive. It doesn’t dictate what justice should look like. Instead, it offers a shared language for scholars, activists, and policymakers to discuss and analyze the contested and dynamic nature of justice struggles.

Chapter Highlights

Shaping Justice

Chapter 2 explores how justice is shaped through emancipatory and transformative practices. It highlights the emergence of mechanisms like resistance, reclamation, and resilience, which collectively demand new social contracts to address structural and racialized violence.

Feeling Justice

Justice isn’t just about legal outcomes — it needs to be seen, felt, and believed. Chapter 3 delves into how emotions and perceptions of justice can bolster or undermine political claims, shaping the trajectory of change.

Being Justice

In our rapidly evolving digital world, justice struggles face new obstacles. Chapter 4 examines how algorithmic decision-making can obscure efforts for justice and underscores the need for careful management of technology in justice-seeking initiatives.

Justicecraft makes three key contributions

The book introduces a new research agenda for justice scholars, moving beyond “top-down” or “bottom-up” analyses to view change as multidimensional.

The framework offers a more complete picture of justice struggles, laying the groundwork for better support and implementation of political change.

Justicecraft calls for an inclusive vision and practice of political change, encouraging broader engagement with non-traditional transitional justice actors.

Conclusion

By foregrounding alternative spaces, competing claims, and diverse agencies, the framework of justicecraft helps us identify and address crucial struggles that might otherwise be overlooked - reducing the risk of repeated injustices.

In a world hungry for meaningful change, justicecraft offers a hopeful and practical way forward.

Lauren Balasco is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stockton University. Her research focuses on political transitions and human rights. Balasco recently co-authored Engaging Citizenship with Jennifer Forestal and Claire Abernathy (Oxford University Press, 2025), a textbook which introduces foundational concepts in political science through the lens of citizenship, democracy, and civic engagement, highlighting the relevance of the discipline to students' lives and encouraging them to become engaged and empowered citizens.

Eliza Garnsey is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations at the Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London. Her research focuses on art and visual culture in international relations and world politics, particularly in relation to human rights, transitional justice, and conflict. Eliza’s monograph, The Justice of Visual Art: Creative State-Building in Times of Political Transition (2020), demonstrates that there are aesthetic and creative ways to pursue transitional justice. Her recent book, Creating Justice: Conversations on Art and Human Rights (2024), co-edited with Caitlin Hamilton, features conversations between artists and scholars about the ways art can confront injustice, amplify marginalised voices, and imagine new possibilities.

Arnaud Kurze is Associate Professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University and Director of Project AROS Lab, an experiential learning platform fuelling innovative research on digital studies and digital literacy. He holds a PhD in Political Science and has lectured globally, including Columbia University, Sciences Po and American University in Cairo. His work bridges theory and practice, including Mapping Queerness in Times of Uncertainty (2024) and Mapping Global Justice: Perspectives, Cases, and Practice (2023). He is the recipient of many awards and scholarships, including the Wilson Center, the Fulbright Program, and the Library of Congress.

Christopher K. Lamont is a professor of international relations at Tokyo International University in Japan. His research focuses on transitional justice, human rights, and the governance of emerging technologies. Chris’ monograph International Criminal Justice and the Politics of Compliance (2010) explored state cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Chris has also co-authored with Arnaud Kurze Mapping Global Justice: Perspectives, Cases, and Practice (2023) and has co-edited New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice: Gender, Art, and Memory (2019) among other collections. Chris has also contributed to numerous peer reviewed journals.